Friday, May 9, 2008

Kid Friendly Food Fridays - Creamy Chicken Tacos!

Welcome back to Kid-Friendly Food Fridays! We started this weekly event to feature healthy, yummy, delicious, and quick recipes to make for kids! For more information on this weekly event, please visit the Kid Friendly Food Fridays Headquarters! We welcome you to submit recipes and ideas for this feature to gingerlemon_girl at yahoo dot com!

Today's recipe comes from our friend Kelly. You are probably familiar with my friend Kelly by now, as she contributed a recipe for outstanding waffles several weeks ago. I trust Kelly's opinion on kid-friendly recipes because she is wonderful mom to two young children, who love her gluten free cooking!

During the summer in the Ginger Lemon Girl household, our work schedules change and it always takes Michael and me a few weeks to adjust our new, usually later, dinner routine. We have to come up with fast, easy, and hopefully nutritious meals, or we'll be eating at 9pm every night!

Recently I asked Kelly if she had any really easy, yummy, and FAST ideas for a gluten free dinner. In no time at all Kelly whipped out a recipe for Creamy Chicken Tacos, which she received from her sister. Here are Kelly's thoughts on these great tacos:

"{This recipe} makes enough for 6-10 meals or more. When we make this dish, we can create meals from it for a week! The leftovers also freeze very well. Company loves it and EVERYONE asks for the recipe. There is also a lot you can do with it other than just making tacos:

I also like to put it on half a corn tortilla, sprinkle with cheese, and microwave it for a minute to melt the cheese. Then I add extra sour cream and salsa, fold it over and eat it with a fork.

With so many options, this recipe never gets old!"

Michael and I made these tacos and we LOVE them! We ate creamy chicken tacos for 3 meals this week, and never tired of them! After those meals we still had enough leftovers that I made a creamy chicken enchilada casserole and froze it for a quick dinner next week! I love how easy this is to make in the crockpot. I'm not usually a big fan of the crockpot because I am away from home for 12 hours a day, and normally anything left in the crockpot that long isn't worth eating! With this recipe, I can easily make it on Sunday, then just heat up what we need for dinner the next day! Perfect for busy moms and working families!

Directions:Place chicken breasts in the crockpot, sprinkle with taco seasoningand pour salsa on top. Cover and turn on low for 6-8 hours or highfor 4-6 hours. One hour before you want to eat it, shred all thechicken with two forks, add rice and sour cream, stir, cover for thelast hour.

*Carrie's Recipe Notes: When I started the chicken, I also added a can of green chilies in addition to the salsa. In the last hour of cooking, I also added a can of drained and rinsed black beans along with the sour cream and brown rice! We loved these additions! If your kids do not like black beans (but you would like to add them to the recipe) puree the beans in your blender and then stir them into the chicken in the last hour of cooking!

Sue -- Long grain browl rice will work just fine as long as you PRECOOK it before you add it to the crock pot!

The reason minute rice is used here, is because it will quickly cook in the crock pot in less than an hour! So just pre-cook half a cup of regular brown rice and then add it to the chicken the last hour of cooking! Let me know how it turns out!!

I know I missed the deadline for Kid Food, again. I keep thinking I'll get caught up and be able to contribute ON TIME. Ha ha!

But I was almost ready this week. So I posted a kid-friendly recipe on my blog today.

That crock pot chicken looks great! I'm avoiding all powdered spices, but I could add a layer of fresh onions and peppers (sweet and hot) to make up for it. I really miss chili powder and Lawry's seasoned salt. Sniff!

Sarah -- You are so welcome! You have a wonderful gluten free blog! Keep up the good work!

Melanie (Gluti Girl) -- Don't you just love that cheesy chicken primavera! That is such an easy and yummy meal! I just love it! You will LOVE these tacos! It's so versatile, that the whole family can make whatever meal they want with it!

Hi I am enjoying reading your blog so much, this is the second recipe of yours I've tried (after the wonderful Sarah's oatmeal) and it was really delicious and easy to do! I couldn't find black beans or a can of green chillies to add but put in a tin of red kidney beans and some pre-cooked rice (thanks for explaining about the difference between the two). Also I had to make my own taco seasoning 1.5 tea paprika, 1 tea chilli pdr, 1 tea cumin, 0.5 tea dried oregano, 0.5 tea salt worked out well for us if anyone else couldn't get to some taco seasoning.I served it with coconut lemongrass rice and avocado salad.My brother had 3 serves! and wants me to make it again asap.